Look Up Another Term

Definition: spec

(2) (SPEC) (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, Warrenton, VA, www.specbench.org) An organization founded in 1988 to establish standard benchmarks for computers. Its first benchmark was a single CPU rating known as the "SPECmark," in which one SPECmark was equivalent in performance to a VAX 11/780. Although SPEC benchmarks continue to rate CPUs, SPEC has a variety of benchmarks to measure graphics subsystems, Java, Web servers, mail servers, application servers and file servers. Following are the SPEC names for current and retired CPU benchmarks. See benchmark.